


May I Take Your Order Please?

by loopyhoopyfrood



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, extremely condensed casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 03:51:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14035572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loopyhoopyfrood/pseuds/loopyhoopyfrood
Summary: Phryne Fisher orders coffee, meets a senior manager, and becomes embroiled in a crime.





	May I Take Your Order Please?

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a full, multi-chapter casefic, until I realised I have neither the time nor the talent for such a thing. I couldn't NOT write a coffee shop AU however, so decided to condense it into a one-shot.  
> Enjoy.

The first time it’s a plain black coffee and a polite caution that she mind her own business.

Later, she’ll argue that no one in their right mind could have expected her to resist. The yellow police tape had been taunting her for almost a week, and no matter how much she’d flirted, cajoled, or crept she’d been stuck firmly on the civilian’s side. So when the tape comes down it’s only natural that she’s the first through the door of City South Coffee.

The young man behind the counter seems only too eager to talk, although it might partly be because her flirtatious demeanour has thrown him off balance. She’s just getting to the interesting part when they’re interrupted, the stern-faced man by the coffee machine cutting off all talk of break ins and a missing sugar with a polite request that she place her order.

She asks for coffee; no sugar, no milk, and she smiles as the barista, whose nametag identifies him as ‘Hugh’ fumbles with her card. She thanks him, and he’s blushing as she wanders over to collect her drink. The other man’s nametag calls him ‘Jack’, and tells her that he’s a senior manager. She leans on the counter as Jack deftly pours her coffee, and hopes that he’ll be able to tell her more. To her surprise he seems immune to her charm, avoiding her inquiries with an ease that tells of more than just years of customer service. He firmly places a steaming cup down, forcing to her remove her arms from the counter, and sends her away with a strict request that she stop asking questions.

 

The second time it’s a refusal to serve her and a stern demand that she leaves.

She can’t really blame him. Her mischievous request for coffee was an attempt to break the ice, but having arrived to find his storeroom being broken into for the second time Jack’s understandably not in the mood for jokes. She’s firmly escorted out without even the chance to retrieve her lock picks, pleasantly surprised by the strength hidden under his sleeves as he grips her arm.

It might just be an attempt to get her to leave, but this time he answers her questions. Curtly, but with just enough detail to set the cogs of her mind spinning. Yes, some sugar was stolen. No, nothing else was missing. Masterfully, she gets him talking about how their new delivery driver is constantly mixing up deliveries, sending shipments to the wrong branch, and _yes_ he had considered the implications but frankly, Miss Fisher, it was the police’s problem now, not theirs, and would she please escort herself from the premises and let him get on with his job.

She does leave eventually, making it clear she’s leaving on her terms, not his, but she doesn’t stop thinking about the break in. The first one, that is, not hers. Jack seems to have dismissed it, and she doubts the police are considering the matter with any seriousness, but she’s intrigued. She spends the rest of the weekend wondering why someone would go to all that trouble just to steal a box of sugar packets.

 

The third time it’s a thermos of tea and an annoyed insistence that she’s wasting his time.

He’s still not sure what he’s doing here, he tells himself it’s because it was the only way to get her to stop asking and not because the mystery of the break in won’t stop badgering him. She’d insisted on using his car, and after seeing hers he’d reluctantly agreed. Hers would definitely get them noticed.

He silently holds out the steaming cap he’d poured when she started shivering, and she takes it with a smile. It’s almost three in the morning, and instead of sleeping like any normal person Jack’s sat in the driver’s seat, parked up opposite the back entrance of their partner store, City North Coffee, watching absolutely nothing happen. Phryne had outlined her theory in detail, how the sugar wasn’t sugar and City South hadn’t been its intended location, and Jack’s first thought had been that the woman watched far too many crime dramas.

The delivery truck pulls in at half past three, and he _knows_ she watches too many crime dramas when he turns to find she’s slipped from the car, and he has to resist the urge to bang his head against the steering wheel when he sees her slinking through the shadows, unperturbed by the men rushing between the van and the shop’s back door. He watches the men, trying to figure out how he’d warn her if one of them happens to look the wrong way, and it dawns on him that he knows some of these people. He pulls out his phone, using the zoom to take shadowy photos. The details are unclear, Jack’s not stupid enough to turn on the flash, but he’s fairly certain the City North staff are carrying guns.

He’s debating texting Phryne, praying that she’s smart enough to have her phone on silent, when the passenger door opens and she slips back in, holding her prize aloft. The guns have gone a long way to convincing him that _something’s_ wrong, and he doesn’t argue when she directs him not to her home, but to a nearby university. She knows someone there, she says, and somehow that’s not surprising. She leaves, clutching the small packet of sugar as if it were the most precious thing in the world, and he drives himself home. He falls asleep wondering why people who work at a coffee shop, people he’s recognised from training weekends and staff parties, would need to carry guns.

 

The fourth time it’s a whiskey infused hot chocolate and a reluctant concern for her well-being.

They’re not in his shop this time, nor, thankfully, in his car, but instead he’s somehow found himself in the kitchen of a building that strikes him as more of a mansion than a house. She doesn’t have any of his usual tools, but he makes do, boiling the milk on the stove more to give himself something to do than out of any particular desire for a drink. He pours himself a cup anyway, after handing her the first, and he doesn’t complain when she adds a generous splash from a bottle that probably cost more than his monthly wage. It certainly tastes like it.

They sit in silence, thinking about how the sugar wasn’t sugar after all, and he can’t help how his eyes scan her body, cataloguing each and every mark the smugglers left on her. There’s a small part of him that admires her bravery, but for the most part he just wonders how she could be stupid enough to take on a suspected drug smuggling operation on her own. She points out that she called for back up. He points out that she should have called the police, not a coffee shop senior manager. She points out that he didn’t call them either.

 

The fifth time it’s an elaborate concoction of syrups and a resigned horror at her announcement.

He hadn’t been able to begrudge her celebrating, she had, after all, almost single-handedly exposed and confronted a drug-smuggling ring, leaving the police to do nothing but cart off the already-restrained perpetrators. Overall he was, although he’d never admit it, impressed. His boss was less so, faced with the need to find a whole new staff team, a new sugar supplier, and a viable reason he’d failed to realise one of his stores was being used to smuggle cocaine, but, thankfully, none of that was Jack’s problem.

Less thankfully, Phryne seems to have decided that Jack doesn’t have enough problems in his life, and as she makes her announcement he almost chokes on his syrup-less coffee. It’s not her becoming a P.I. he has a problem with, although he does strengthen his resolve not to allow himself to be coerced into any more of her investigative schemes. He does, however, point out that his coffee shop is a coffee shop, not an office block, and maybe she should find somewhere else to host her newfound business. He’s not surprised when she simply rolls her eyes and tells him it’s too late, she’s already had her business cards printed, and just think of all the revenue he’ll get.

He is surprised when he finds he doesn’t mind all that much when, a few weeks later, he ends up standing before a dead body, ready to assist Phryne Fisher in her latest investigation.


End file.
